BLOOD RED SARI

by Banker, Ashok K

  Behind her, she heard Isaac’s gravelly voice shout something even as she saw Graham’s fleshy fair face loom in front of her. He had a gun too, but was staring wide-eyed at something to his right, distracted momentarily. She caught a glimpse of a man beside Graham clutching at a spurting red geyser. It took her brain a fraction of a second longer to recognize that the spurting geyser was his carotid artery and that it was Philip and he had been struck in the throat by one of Isaac’s wild shots.

  She rammed into Graham, sending him lurching backwards, hands flying up and outwards for balance, the gun hand rising as well, firing a shot up into the ceiling and one over her left shoulder, the heat of its passing searing her collarbone like a red hot whip. Then he struck the jamb of the open room door and something cracked in his head or back and she saw his eyes roll up, the whites flashing as he went down. She was at the door now, and practically flew through it. Now she was in the corridor outside and there were two men standing in front of her, staring dumbly.

  Both had guns, but only one had his in his hand. He raised it but she kicked it hard, missed, and hit his right hipbone instead. The impact sent a sharp burst of pain into her big right toe, and the man lurched and fell against his partner, the gun going off, two shots going wild. The other man lost his footing and fell sideways against a room service trolley piled with discarded dinner dishes and chrome-plated dish warmers and everything went flying in a clattering cacophony.

  She leapt over the sprawled body of the first man, feeling something give in her right foot as she landed. Then she was racing down the corridor and down the stairs. Mercifully, there were no more men with guns barring her way and at this hour, the Papanasam Sea Resort was deserted. She reached the lobby and ran past the reception. A man was at the desk, talking urgently on a cell phone; he pointed at her as she went past, saying her name into the phone. She went from the lobby into the courtyard, looking around for some form of transportation. Her toe was broken or hurt badly because she wasn’t able to put her weight on the right foot properly. Adrenalin had got her down the stairs, but every step was agony. Broken. No mistaking that sensation. She needed to get transportation fast or they would catch her right here in another minute, and after the mess she had caused in the room, she had a feeling they would expect more than a night’s rental.

  She saw Philip’s Norton on its stand in the car park. It was one of the old WWII models which used a push-button start instead of an ignition key. She prayed that he hadn’t had it modified for whatever reason and swung her leg over the saddle-seat. Pressed the button. And grinned with sick relief when the powerful 850 cc engine turned over like butter on hot toast. Thank God for Philip and his obsessive care for Achchan’s old Norton.

  She put the bike into gear, fumbling a moment because her right foot was already going numb with the shock of the broken toe. Her left collarbone felt like it was on fire and bathed in hot oil. She felt wetness and assumed she was bleeding where the shot had scored her, but there was no time to waste on first aid. She fumbled through the first, then managed to get it into second gear and turned the accelerator, roaring out of the courtyard and turning onto the new road. She heard shouts from the hotel – one was definitely Isaac’s voice yelling from the window of her room above, and then she heard gunshots. Something burst behind her and things whizzed and splattered in the darkness beyond the road, but she pushed the Norton into third and roared off down the road, leaving the guns and men and yelling behind, for now at least, though not for long, she knew. They would catch up with her sooner or later, that was not in doubt. The main thing was how much she could get done before they did.

  7.2

  NACHIKETA EMERGED FROM A miasma of pain and heat. She felt as if she had been cooked and roasted and was still in the oven. Vision swam out of the murky horizon, rushing at her like a panorama painted on the side of a monorail superfast train and reality collided with her consciousness. She gasped and tried to fumble at the object lodged in her airway but found her hands bound by her side. Hissing and pinging and other life support sounds provided an orchestra by her bedside. She sensed the sickening odours of disinfectant, pus, blood and bodily unguents, and knew she was in a hospital room. The logos of various pharma companies marched across the walls of the room, masquerading as public service messages. She gasped and choked and struggled until people in white swam into and out of her field of vision, making irritable sounds and doing things to the apparatus to which she was hooked up.

  Finally, the obstruction in her airway was removed and she was able to speak. ‘Police,’ she said. ‘Need … speak police.’ Her voice sounded hoarse, like female friends who smoked too much, the kind of husky womanly voice she had always thought men found sexy. She hated the sound coming from her own ravaged throat. ‘Please … urgent.’ She was gasping, she realized.

  ‘You need rest, madam. We have to insert oxygen again.’ The nurse was a hard-faced woman of indeterminate age and ethnicity. Her accent was classic Dilli.

  ‘No, please,’ Nachiketa said. ‘It is police matter. Urgent.’

  The sound of voices from somewhere to the right distracted the nurse. She left Nachiketa’s bedside for a moment. The next face that swam into view was a man’s, unrecognizable with a bandage around his head. He was good-looking in a rough Jat kind of way. Nachiketa spent a moment staring at him and wondered if she had lost her memory entirely because she had no clue who he was. For a moment her heart lurched, thinking that he might be the man who had called her, one of the bastards who had raped and killed Shonali and tried to burn her to death as well. But what would he be doing here?

  ‘Memsaab,’ he said, ‘yourself not recognizing? Myself Rajendra Powar, watchman.’

  The security guard of her office building. What the hell was he doing here?

  He folded his bandaged hands in front of his forehead, tears springing to his bloodshot eyes. ‘I am so sorry, madam. They hit me on head from behind and go in. I was behosh all time. I wake up and see all burning.’ He lapsed into Haryanvi for a sentence or three, and all she could make out was that he was describing the fire.

  She tried to make sense of his words. Her brain still felt like it was on slow boil, as if the blood in her veins would start popping and crackling at any moment. ‘My office …’ she asked hoarsely. ‘All … gone?’

  He nodded, wiping errant tears from his face. ‘Fire brigade say maybe they save building, maybe not. I take out you in time. Come in ambulance with yourself.’

  She tried to keep him in focus. ‘You pulled me out?’

  He nodded vigorously. ‘You screaming–screaming. Kuttey bhaunk rahein the. Dog barking? I hear. Go inside. You near door, under table. I take you out.’

  He showed her his hands. They were both bandaged in large swathing bundles. She realized that his hair had burned away too, and his eyelashes and eyebrows. Was that how she looked too? Probably worse. You weren’t a good-looking Jat to begin with, Nachos. She felt something swimming to the top of her consciousness but it kept slipping away.

  ‘Where are we now?’

  ‘AIIMS,’ he said.

  As if on cue, a doctor appeared with the same nurse beside him, looking irritable and impatient. ‘Ma’am, it is AIIMS policy not to treat burn victims. For humanitarian reasons, we gave you emergency treatment, but you will have to make arrangements to continue your care elsewhere.’

  She tried to absorb this new twist in the tale. ‘Where am I supposed to go?’

  ‘We can have you transferred to another hospital. Your brother will have to go with you; he is also a burn patient.’

  She began to correct him then realized it didn’t matter. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Ambulance is waiting outside.’ He turned and spoke to the nurse, then left the room. The nurse said something in Haryanvi to Rajendra Powar who answered in like fashion.

  ‘Powar,’ Nachiketa said hoarsely.

  He said something else to the nurse, then turned back to her.

  ‘My friend,
Shonali …’ she asked, hoping against hope.

  He raised a bandaged hand to his face, making a groaning sound. ‘What to say, madam. I am lost job, don’t care. Lekin goondas come into my building, rape and kill and burn office, I cannot forgive myself.’

  She had been expecting that, but it still felt like a blow, as if Shonali had only just died. In the darkness of the inside office, she had still hoped that her inability to find a pulse was due to her inexperience. Now she knew. Shonali was dead. She was supposed to have died too in that fire trap, and the only reason she had survived was because of an overzealous young Jat security guard who had risked his own life to save hers.

  ‘What about …’ she thought of her office, all her documents, court papers, passport, the detritus accumulated over the past few years that she had been in Delhi, her law practice, but that was too overwhelming right now, too much. For the moment, she had to try and figure out what had happened, why Shonali had been killed, why those men had tried to kill her. What had they wanted, damnit? Why hadn’t they been there when she reached the office? The man on the phone had talked about something she had which they wanted back. But what?

  Then it came to her, unbidden, along with the gruesome memory of Justice’s corpse, tongue lolling, lips curled back to reveal canine fangs. ‘Powar …’ she rasped. ‘There was a package …’

  Rajendra Powar nodded at once, surprising her by seeming to know exactly what she meant. ‘Yes, madam, you holding it saying something English. Important, na?’ He left her bedside for a moment, then came back holding something gingerly between his bandaged hands. Even with the stains of the dog’s blood and charred corners, she could make out the yellow manila envelope, the one that had somehow landed under the very table beneath which she took shelter. It was scorched but mostly intact.

  7.3

  A HORDE OF FOOTBALL fans had boarded at the sports stadium stop. They milled about now in the passenger car, boisterous and irrepressible. Sheila turned to one promising-looking bunch near her wearing Arsenal colours, and addressed the tallest and biggest among them with the harshest, most venomous tone she could muster: ‘Arsenal is the full form of arse, isn’t it?’

  There was a moment of stunned silence into which she added, smiling, ‘So what does that make you all? Arsenalholes?’

  And she turned and walked away, moving quickly through the aisle until she reached the Mohun Bagan group she had settled on earlier. In perfect contrite Bengali she said, putting on her best damsel-in-distress face: ‘Those men are threatening me, they say we Mohun Bagan fans are Bengali bastards and bitches. Please help.’

  Then she pushed on past, as if desperately scared and eager to get away.

  The sounds behind her that erupted were hugely satisfying. She heard accusations and counter-accusations, shouts and abuses, Bengali swear words and English abuses. India shining: the flat global village that God sat on and polished with his bum, as Gunter Grass might have said now if he’d visited the city in this millennium. She kept moving until she was at the end of the coach and walked straight up to the man with the cap, the blue-eyed blonde.

  He glanced up in surprise as she approached. He had been briefly distracted by the ruckus, and the skirmishing passengers had blocked his view for the last few metres. She took the last few steps faster than he could respond to, and lashed out with a sideways kick that rammed the bridge of his nose into his brain and sent his head back against the glass of the coach window, where it struck with a sickening crunch. Blood spurted from his nostrils, but his eyes were already blind and he tumbled off his seat and to the floor in a sprawled heap. There was a smear on the window where his head had struck.

  She turned and took stock of the chaos she had engendered. The argument had become a full-blown brawl, barely thirty seconds after she had insulted the first group. That was the nice thing about football fans. They were so dependable. Nobody had even noticed her assault of the unfortunate blonde. They were all watching the fracas with muted Bengali interest.

  She had timed her move so that the train was already pulling into Phoolbagan. There was nobody waiting by the door and she got off alone, sprinting quickly to the next car and waving her arms wildly. The man in the adjoining car was already on his feet and he saw her and blinked, then ran for the exit. No more pretence, time to step up. She ran the other way, towards the exit, but only until she saw the third man get out of the coach on the other side. She stopped as he turned towards her, his hand slipping into his the side pocket of his jacket, holding something. She pretended to stop, as if afraid of him, and turned back. The other man was coming towards her from that side. They had her boxed in now, and both men had their hands in their pockets, which suggested they had either seen her attack the blonde or were willing to up the ante anyway.

  She pretended to back away behind a pillar. There was only a railing this way, and a view of Phoolbagan, which wasn’t much of a vista, especially at this time of night. The lights of Kolkata proper illuminated the view further ahead.

  She waited for them to come to her, knowing they would, then sprinted around the pillar, throwing herself feet first at the nearest man. Because she had the package in her hand and didn’t want to put it down even for a second, she could only use her feet. At the sight of her, his hand holding the gun slipped out of his pocket, barrel turning towards her. But it was off by at least an inch or two and she was already landing on his chest, feet first. She hit him with all her 57 kgs, propelled by the flying leap, and felt his ribcage yield as he was thrown back. He went sprawling backwards across the platform, gun flying out of his hand. She didn’t see where it fell, and was already landing on her feet again and somersaulting, knowing that the other man had had more time and a better line of fire. Right enough, she heard the soft burr of an automatic and saw large dimples appear in the side of the metro train, stitching a pattern over the Bank of Japan and other logos. Then she was sprinting, crouched-over, behind another pillar and around it. The man she had drop-kicked continued his slide across the platform, knocking over a few passengers who in turn stumbled and reached out and pulled down a few more people. Someone cried out in Bengali, but she didn’t catch the word.

  She looked around. The lighter-skinned African was nowhere in sight. Smart man. She glanced around and saw a man in a suit with a briefcase standing on the ground beside him, gaping at her. He had a Blackberry to his ear and looked north Indian in that clean cut way. She grinned at him. He grinned back instinctively, absurdly. She picked up his briefcase and tossed it around the pillar, then went around the other side.

  The African was caught unawares by the briefcase flying at him, firing at it in automatic response. She came around the other side of the pillar, intending to run low and catch him in the abdomen. But he was quick to adapt and the gun turned to blaze out at her, the muzzle flash blinding her for a second and she was certain she had been shot, but somehow she was still moving – and so was he – and they met in a kind of lovers’ embrace, her hand clutching at his abdomen, his gun turning to follow her. She punched him low and hard before spinning around in a ballet-pirouette, trying to avoid the gun barrel following her ominously. He doubled over, going to his knees, the gun dipping low to fire off a round or two into the concrete floor. She spun and came around again, taking hold of his neck from behind in a garrote grip, and wrenched hard, the gun already turning up and over his shoulder again, about to fire, and this time at such close range, he couldn’t miss. She felt his neck snap and the gun hand and everything else going limp. She let him fall to the platform, his forehead thumping the ground hard.

  Then something exploded behind her and she started to turn her head, seeing an ad display kiosk struck by an invisible fist. Without completing the turn, she rolled over behind the nearest pillar. More shots followed from the direction of the train and she guessed that the man she had kicked had either found his gun very quickly or had another one handy. He was too far away for her to take at a run and there were no more briefcases to
throw at him, so she did the only other thing she could: she went south.

  The railing was only a metre-and-a-half high and she vaulted it easily. It was the landing she was worried about. Ten metres to the street, she estimated, give or take a metre. She fell, knowing that if she broke a leg while landing, there would be a bullet in her brain a moment later, shot from above. But as the man once said, it was the only gig in town and she would rather die trying than try dying.

  Chi Kou Ri

  Red Dog Day

  As per Chinese customs and traditions, the third day after the Chinese new year is known as chì kou, directly translated as ‘red mouth’ or, when the symbol for poverty is added, as ‘red dog day’. Chì kou is also called chì gou rì. Chì gou means ‘the God of Blazing Wrath’. It is generally accepted that it is not a good day to socialize or visit your relatives and friends.

  Eight

  8.1

  THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ZOO HAD BEEN one of Anita’s favourite places to visit as a girl. But despite her numerous visits, she had only come once with Lalima, and they had held hands and walked around for hours and it had been one of those idyllic days that you remember forever. Unlike most zoos in Indian cities, it was a sprawling enclosed space with woodlands, lakes, large patches of lush green lawns that could have done with more frequent mowing, beautiful old museums with Raja Ravi Varma paintings that had scandalously clad women from Puranic epics, gaping at which school kids giggled while their teacher shushed them, and the animals actually looked like they were alive and healthy. Unlike, say, the Mumbai Zoo where she had felt that the beggars on the streets lived better than the animals, and where crowds stood around haranguing and harassing the creatures all day. She tried not to think about that long-lost summer day, but the image of two young girls, innocent of life and with a universe of possibilities ahead of them, refused to be completely dismissed, and around every corner she saw something that reminded her of it. The lawns were much better maintained now, and the general standard of cleanliness and upkeep was impressive. She spent a moment reading a notice that informed her that due to the increased erosion of forests and fauna, the zoo had changed its mission to focus on conservation rather than recreation. The authorities had even displayed a website URL. She limped slowly around, trying to ignore the pain in her toe that even a handful of painkillers hadn’t been able to numb.